Local businesses raised £2,000 to help blind and partially sighted people at the Dorset Blind Association Virtual Row event in Bournemouth Square on Friday.
Business supporters, volunteers and visually impaired people used rowing machines in Bournemouth Square on Friday to compete and raise funds at the annual Virtual Row.
Members of the community joined in with the fun, including a police officer in uniform racing against Ben, the community Champion from Asda Bournemouth.
Participants included teams from Barclays, The Elstead Hotel, English 2000, Nationwide, Eurocentres and a team from Dorset Blind Association consisting of members, employees and the CEO of the charity. Rowing machines were provided by West Hants leisure centre and goody bags from Fitness First Bournemouth.
All teams competed to 10,000m with Nationwide teams both first and second place winning paintballing vouchers. Public challengers aimed to beat olympic standard rower Simon Banwell’s time 37s to 250m and came close; the women’s winner rowed her way to 250m in just 53 seconds and the men’s winner in just 38 seconds!
Dorset Blind Association helps 1000 members each month and is powered by over 400 volunteers and just 10 full time staff members. The charity does not receive any government or larger charity funding and solely relies on fundraising activities like this. To see a list of future events please visit www.dorsetblind.org.uk/events
The event was a huge success and raised £2000 for the charity which will support 6 local people for a whole year.
Laura Wardman, Fundraiser from Dorset Blind Association who organised this years event says “We would like to thank all the teams and individuals who took part on the day. It was a huge success and we couldn’t have done this without our sponsors and volunteers who helped us on the day from Nationwide and Asda, as well as our regular volunteers”
